Artificial Intelligence and Future Supply Chains

By Pierfrancesco Manenti, vice president research, SCM World "Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." These were the words used in 1955 to launch the very first research project that coined the term'artificial intelligence'. Fast forward 60 years and artificial intelligence – or machine learning as many call it – is emerging as the next big technology. In SCM World's 2016 Future of Supply Chain Survey, we found big jumps in importance for a series of disruptive technologies with respect to supply chain strategies, some of which were considered largely irrelevant just a couple of years ago. One of these is machine learning, which in 2016 cemented its place in the technology mainstream.